1

2

8

9

15

16

22

23

29

30

From American Diplomacy, Michael Hornblow on the Victors and Vanquished 2012. Can you save diplomacy from itself? Cristina Odone on Carne Ross's quixotic crusade to help emerging nations get their seat at the table. From The National Interest, John Quiggin on the Great Oil Fallacy. John Coffey reviewsNo One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn by Charles A. Kupchan. Gram Slattery on utilitarianism and the neoconservative conceit. Evangelists of democracy: David Rieff on how radicals of the democracy-promotion movement embody the very thing they are fighting against — a closed-minded conviction that they represent the one true path for all societies and thus possess a monopoly on social, ethical and political truth. James L. Abrahamson reviewsThe War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism by Jon B. Perdue. The newest threat to people and the planet: Patrick Bond on the rise of “sub-imperialism”. From The Nation, a review essay on the work of Fred Halliday by Susie Linfield. An interview with Richard A. Falk, an excerpt from Weapon of the Strong: Conversations on US State Terrorism by Cihan Aksan and Jon Bailes.

A new issue of Postcolonial Text is out. Tayyab Mahmud (Seattle): Debt and Discipline. Julien Etienne (LSE) and Gerhard Schnyder (King's College): Logics of Action and Models of Capitalism: Explaining Bottom-Up Liberal and Non-Liberal Change. From New Geography, Joshua Wright on the rise of management consultants. The year in closed government: How a private email network exposed the secret dealings of top government officials. Kristina Musholt reviewsThe Things We Do and Why We Do Them by Constantine Sandis. From FDL, a book salon on When Disaster Strikes: A Comprehensive Guide for Emergency Planning and Crisis Survival by Matthew Stein. City Life: Heather Mac Donald left literature behind to critique liberal policies. From Vice, here is Young Americans, a documentary series about what really went down in 2012, directed by Lance Bangs. Michael Skapinker reviewsSpell it Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling by David Crystal, The Story of Ain’t: America, Its Language and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published by David Skinner, and Words of the World: A Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary by Sarah Ogilvie.

Robin Bradley Kar (Illinois): Western Legal Prehistory: Reconstructing the Hidden Origins of Western Law and Civilization. Hila Shamir (Tel Aviv): A Labor Paradigm for Human Trafficking. From Capitalism magazine, Leonard Peikoff on why Christmas should be more commercial. Christopher de Bellaigue reviewsDoing Psychoanalysis in Tehran by Gohar Homayounpour. From Tablet, Liel Leibovitz on why Israel has no Newtowns: It’s the Jewish state’s gun culture, not its laws, that prevents mass shootings like the one in Connecticut; and gun-rights advocates cite Nazi laws in their defense of the Second Amendment — is the comparison fair? In real life, militant neutrals are the sort of people that if a mutual friend did something really, truly horrible to you, like stabbed you in the face or something and killed your dog, would be all ear muffs and horse blinders and “Oh gosh, well, you guys are both my friends so I don’t want to hear it,” should you godforbid complain about all your wounds or say you missed your dog or something. Discover magazine rebuilds entire edit and design staff. Here is the #lastprintissue of Newsweek.